... we're committed to continuing to make changes that improve the site for our members. As always, we welcome your ideas and suggestions and look forward to hearing what you have to say

If Oracle was committed as outlined, shouldn't the results be different? How does Oracle evaluate the situation and verify success? If I consider the current status quo and developments this year, there is almost no more point logging in as overall participation, usability and exchange of information have finally come to a halt.

... we're committed to continuing to make changes that improve the site for our members. As always, we welcome your ideas and suggestions and look forward to hearing what you have to say

If Oracle was committed as outlined, shouldn't the results be different? How does Oracle evaluate the situation and verify success? If I consider the current status quo and developments this year, there is almost no more point logging in as overall participation, usability and exchange of information have finally come to a halt.

Witness last week's fiasco with the inbox and other feeds, on both OTN an MOSC.

The interface at OraFAQ may be clunky, but it is rock solid. Can't remember ever having an issue there.

Kind of reminds me of an episode of 'Car Talk'. One of the brothers (I can't remember which) made the comment that it took the Japanese auto manufacturers to show the American manufacturers how to build quality into a car. The other brother replied that no, the Japanese only showed the Americans that it could be done. The Americans still refused to learn. (that was particularly interesting to me because at the time I was working at a US assembly plant for a Japanese auto company).

So, in the same vein, OraFAQ has shown that a reliable, stable, and popular product forum can be created - and without a rewards/gamification/social media slant, to boot.. But Oracle hasn't learned the lesson.

Okay that is so ugly my eyes are now bleeding BUT - it runs fast, it does not freeze on a page, it has not told me that it is not currently available for the 2nd time as many days - in short - I have to agree with you, why can't Oracle do that?

Yes, several people have suggested using APEX (and even volunteering to do it IIRC). Asktom originally was very hierarchical - Tom's baby, even - I'm glad to see the way it got distributed. I also still like how you can follow threads for years, though I wish I could come up with some suggestion to notate version specificity and deprecation issues.

Here we have a much more network organization (and I mean that in the database sense of many people contributing in an egalitarian manner). There is much hazy in the actual goals of the site. Us techies want it to be an interactive knowledge base that can serve both newbies and and advanced issues. Oracle wants... what, marketing? Cheerleading? Free work? We can guess that Jive wants an income stream and perhaps an exit strategy.

The platform has its pitfalls and shortcomings, but that's not the reason. The real problems are complexity and lack of transparency. Both are the result of implementation and strategy. How can rebranding and merging different communities and interests into one platform, thereby throwing everything into one big basket possibly be the solution? It will just accomplish the opposite, obviously. So I wonder how Oracle evaluates success in this matter.

Why evaluate? We had a reorganization of different computing centres into one. Since the powers to be said that it will be a success it had to be a success. If you evaluate it afterwards you might find that people are not happy because of latencies, poor support, etc. Therefore no one will ask.

Why evaluate? Well, I suppose your response is somewhat sarcastic. If the customer doesn't benefit, perhaps someone else does. Some people see it the other way around, but when there are volunteers involved, I expect high standards.